Choosing a Pain Experience to Reach Their Needs

This year at the EAZA Welfare Forum I was at a workshop which was about “Pain – why does it matter and what can we do about it” by Dr. Heather Bacon. A very interesting and fantastic workshop to join to be able to understand pain in animals. While pain is difficult to measure we are able to look at the animals behaviour to determine if the pain is on a high or low level. 

The Misformed Komodo

She showed us a video of a Komodo dragen who had misinformation in the front legs. The dragon walked on his wrists. The discussion was what type of pain is this and where could that come from with a following question, what should we do. Answers came to the table “This was an outcome of a poor diet” or “It is neurological” and so on. In the video you saw food being presented and the Dragon walking over to reach the food on his wrists. The next discussion popped up.

The fact that the animal is in pain but overtakes his own painful feeling with a high food drive to get the meat. This on it’s own is a welfare deficit which was mentioned by some of the people in the room. This was an eye opener because animals do have to survive and if they are in pain they have to make further choices to survive. Food drive overtakes this specific pain.

Reaching The Animals Needs – The Giraffe

Coming back to what we at Zoospensefull talk about a lot is, are we giving the needs the animals needs to thrive? This dragon story started to reflect to more situations I’ve seen in the past. A couple weeks ago I saw a giraffe leaning over an electric fence to reach for some green weeds. In between the giraffe and the weeds there was a high electric fence. The electric fence was on which is on whenever animals are on the field. The giraffe made the choice to lean against the electric fence and push far enough to reach the green weeds at the other side. What made it unbelievable was to observe an animal that accepts an uncomfortable feeling to be able to reach what they want. 

Later that day I heard somebody say as a solution to make the fences taller. Would that be the correct solution? We don’t think so. Because if we look at the behaviour of the dragon or the giraffe we can conclude that something is missing in their needs they have. A giraffe should forage 10-14 hours a day and ruminating 6,5-7,5 hours a day which is what the EAZA Giraffe guideline says. Zoological institutions do not reach this at all. This means that in the time being where the giraffe should forage and ruminate they need to find other behaviours to replace their needs. In this case the giraffe tries to fulfil it’s own need to forage and will take quite some measures to do so.

The drive that comes with feeding will now extend when they don’t have anything by finding other options. To then take the decision to accept electricity to each twigs, branches, weeds at the other side of the fence means that we are not reaching the actual needs of the giraffes. 

This directly reflects into a welfare deficit. Each animal has their needs and many stereotype, anticipatory and unwanted behaviour comes from a place where the needs aren’t met and therefore the animal chooses to do a behaviour to replace what the animal is supposed to do which is not there. 

Are we able to solve this challenge once it is there? 

This actually depends on the severity of the problem. Regarding the dragon who is by the way 23 years of age you might as well euthanize the individual, harsh to say but we have to be critical to the welfare of the individual. In regards to the giraffe, we need to focus on the behaviour repertoire the animal should have. We need to focus on what the individuals needs are or better said the needs of a giraffe and focus on these.

Stereotype behaviour is another challenge to deal with. It is not the same as the story above but we have to conclude a similar solution. The solution should not be based on reactive management but more towards proactive management. Which comes back to the same question, are you as an animal care taker reaching all the needs what the animal needs to thrive in their environment with a wide range of different behaviours? 

This means that we have to look further into the ethology of the species in our care and make sure that the concerning choices like the Dragon and Giraffe do not become the norm where the animals have to go trough pain to get what they need. 

It is an interesting topic which we need to look at all the time. If it is your dog, horse, cat or animal in the zoo. They all deserve the best welfare in our care. But remember it is not what we think is the best for them it is what they need according to the species!